On the Job

Attorney Jeff Mandell’s Practice

One of Wisconsin’s leading election law litigators, Attorney Jeffrey Mandell is leading the efforts to demand accountability from the fraudulent electors who sought to overturn the will of Wisconsin voters and created the conditions that led to the January 6 insurrection. He served as special counsel to Governor Tony Evers in the bevy of challenges to the validity of Wisconsin’s November 2020 election and represented the City of Green Bay in relation to the Wisconsin Assembly’s sham investigation of that election. He previously prosecuted the complaints that kept Kanye West and Howie Hawkins off of Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential ballot. He has represented Disability Rights Wisconsin, the League of Women Voters, and other nonprofit organizations in defending the right to vote and fair election administration. He helped the Service Employees International Union block efforts to purge hundreds of thousands of registered voters from Wisconsin’s rolls, and he led the state constitutional challenge against the Wisconsin Legislature’s December 2018 lame-duck extraordinary session.

Jeff leads three practice teams at Stafford Rosenbaum—appeals, election and political law, and dealership law. He argues frequently before the Wisconsin Supreme Court and state courts at every level. He regularly handles cases and appeals in federal courts, within Wisconsin and beyond. He has participated in cases at the U.S. Supreme Court about a broad range of issues, from election law to takings, administrative law to civil procedure, class actions to civil liberties.

Jeff has been a commercial litigator for more than fifteen years, first at Bartlit Beck (Chicago), then at Jones Day (Washington, D.C.), and now at Stafford Rosenbaum (Madison). He excels in complex litigation, regardless of subject matter. He is the current co-author of the definitive treatise on the Wisconsin Fair Dealership Law, and he regularly counsels and represents dealers and grantors alike on issues under that law and related statutes. He has represented a tobacco company for more than a decade in the remedial stages of a civil RICO case; helped a financial-guarantee insurer navigate exit from Wisconsin’s largest-ever insurance rehabilitation proceeding; and successfully challenged State procurement decisions on behalf of disappointed bidders.

Jeff graduated from the University of Chicago Law School with high honors. Immediately after law school, Jeff served as a law clerk to the Honorable A. Raymond Randolph on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Jeff is an active member of the American Law Institute, as well as a Fellow of both the American Bar Foundation and the Wisconsin Law Foundation.

Jeff founded and serves as both President of Law Forward, a nonprofit, nonpartisan law firm that protects and advances democracy in Wisconsin. He has served on several other nonprofit Boards, including the Aldo Leopold Nature Center; the Wisconsin Equal Justice Fund; the American Constitution Society, of which he was the Madison Lawyer Chapter Founding President; and Beth Israel Center.

Jeff has been named a Best Lawyer (since 2021) in his appellate practice and commercial litigation, and the Best Lawyers organization named him Lawyer of the Year for 2023 in his appellate practice.

Jeff’s Court Admissions

• State of Wisconsin
• State of Illinois
• Washington, D.C.
• U.S. Supreme Court
• U.S. Courts of Appeals for the District of Columbia Second, Sixth, and Seventh Circuits
• U.S. District Courts for the District of Columbia, Northern District of Illinois, and Eastern and Western Districts of Wisconsin, and the bankruptcy courts in both districts of Wisconsin

Jeff’s Education

• University of Chicago Law School (J.D.) (high honors; Order of the Coif; Law Review editorial board; moot court)
• Dorot Fellowship in Israel
• University of Texas – Austin (M.A.)
• Trinity University (B.A.)

Jeff’s Presentations and Publications

• “Contracting Around the Wisconsin Fair Dealership Law? Forum Selection Clauses, Choice-of-Forum Provisions, and Developments Corporate Counsel Need to Know,” Association of Corporate Counsel – Wisconsin presentation, May 19, 2023
• The Future of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, The Federalist Society’s 2023 Wisconsin Chapter Conference, May 2023
• Here and Now, Wisconsin Public Television, March 2023. On the Gableman Office of Lawyer Regulation complaint and 2020 presidential election fraudulent electors case
• Leadership Now – Wisconsin Chapter, March 2023. On the importance of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election
• A Public Affair: Legal Battles Over the Ballot Box, WORT FM. October 2020